Uhh, no, it's explained in the article that they're being held at a military base for 14-days.

Quote:

The US citizens will be held under quarantine at the March Air Reserve Base in California, where they arrived from Wuhan on Wednesday, January 29 on an aircraft chartered by the US State Department. They have remained at the base since then.

All four cases were mild, and the first infected associate, who noticed symptoms on January 24, started feeling better and returned to work on the 27. The report was published yesterday, January 30, in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The CDC would rather be remembered for overreacting rather than under-reacting, Dr. Nancy Messonnier told reporters in a press conference today.

So that's great and everything, but the initial reaction was anything BUT an overreaction. Up until just a few days ago, they were only screening people coming off of direct flights from Wuhan. This was WELL after cases had been reported all over China. Here in Washington State, where the first US victim lives, they decided to only contact the people they thought he had been in contact with, rather than announce the locations where he had been, thus almost certainly missing people that had made contact with him.

I used to scoff at all the boneheaded mistakes officials make in the various outbreak movies out there, causing whatever virus is out there to spread beyond their containment. The real officials wouldn't be nearly as stupid as these movie bureaucrats! Yeah, oops.

Further testing found that three other associates at the same company in Germany had also contracted the infection. All four cases were mild, and the first infected associate, who noticed symptoms on January 24, started feeling better and returned to work on the 27. The report was published yesterday, January 30, in the New England Journal of Medicine.

OK so the other day I mentioned I'm worried. Not panicked. As panicking doesn't do anyone any good. But I had to take a pause on reading to consider the possibility of a spread of this shit by folks who have minor symptoms. That is a hell of a bug to pull that off to get out of the quarantine zone. Nature finds a way indeed....geesh.

no, there is no 'arrest' involved. Its detention for isolation and quarantine. It is illegal though to break a federal quarantine, if a persons(s) does that an arrest can happen.

Federal law allows conditional release of persons from quarantine if they comply with medical monitoring and surveillance.

The federal government authority for isolation and quarantine is derived from the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and codified in federal law.

Under Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code § 264) the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to take measures to prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and between states.

CFR Title 42 parts 70 and 71 authorizes the CDC to detain, medically examine, and release persons arriving into the United States and traveling between states who are suspected of carrying these communicable diseases.

The US citizens will be held under quarantine at the March Air Reserve Base in California, where they arrived from Wuhan on Wednesday, January 29 on an aircraft chartered by the US State Department.

What happens to the air crew on board the flight (and any other medical workers, etc on board)? Would they also be quarantined? If so I hope they get some significant compensation for volunteering to make a flight like this and getting a forced 2 week vacation.

If one of them is asymptomatically infected and passes the virus on to another one of them a week into the quarantine, could that then cause the virus to break out of containment if that second person doesn't become symptomatic before the quarantine is over? Or are they regularly testing all of them to ensure none of them are asymptomatically infected?

That sucks they're quarantined like that, but I agree that the CDC is better off being remembered for taking strong action here, even if this just turns out to be another mild-illness-causing virus that ends up in common circulation (given the current growth rate internationally I'm not very hopeful of it being contained anymore). They would be castigated for underreacting if this ends up being a lot worse.

All four cases were mild, and the first infected associate, who noticed symptoms on January 24, started feeling better and returned to work on the 27. The report was published yesterday, January 30, in the New England Journal of Medicine.

So recovery is quick?

In many (if not most?) of the known cases outside China, apparently yes. For the cases in Germany, almost all are said to be symptom-free and expected to be able to leave the hospital once they test negative for the virus.

No clear information on the most recent patient, which was only brought in today. It's the son of one of the other patients, and reports didn't specify whether he had actually developed symptoms or had just been tested as a precaution because of his father's infection.

EDIT: May have mis-remembered the exact numbers, so I removed them. Can't look them up right now and don't want to spread misinformation.

All four cases were mild, and the first infected associate, who noticed symptoms on January 24, started feeling better and returned to work on the 27. The report was published yesterday, January 30, in the New England Journal of Medicine.

So recovery is quick?

It depends.

As with any disease, some people will be naturally more resistant to it than others. Coronaviruses are fairly common, and some folks may have been exposed to enough proteins of it to impart a heightened immune response.

This is a new virus, but it's still based on a relatively common family of viruses.

That said, the course of the virus is still being evaluated. He may have been feeling better, but he didn't know he had what he had (until tested later). He MAY have spread it among his co-workers, falsely believing it to be over and he was no longer contagious. They have noticed positive reactions to the presence of the virus in symptom-free people who may, or may not, develop symptoms later, but may (emphasis on may) still be able to pass on the virus (sort of like Typhoid Mary - naturally immune, but still toxic to others).

So, now's not the time to be drawing any conclusions about the course, severity or contagiousness of the disease. Some reports I've read say that of those confirmed to have it, 20% have a "severe" case, necessitating a lot of intervention to keep them from dying.

With 10,000 infected so far, that's 2000 people who need intensive care. That's a SHIT TON of new people to throw onto a health care system in one location (Wuhan has the lion's share of those ill, of course, and most of those 10,000 are there).

If the health care system collapses under the strain, things could get very ugly. It's not come to that, but it could. Hence why drawing conclusions about how mild it might be probably would work against us until we are certain it isn't going to kill 10%-20% of those it infects. The top mortality rate for the Spanish Flu was 10%. SARS was 20% and MERS was 35%. But the latter two didn't infect so many people so quickly.

An one other thing I think might be falsely reassuring is the rate of increase in reported cases. It dawned on me that it was suspiciously linear over the last several days. It may be because they've reached the capacity to test samples in any given time period. I do know that over ten thousand were still pending testing (that number has varied, of course). So it might be that the disease is spreading faster than confirming the cases can keep up with.

However anyone wants to parse it, conclusions about what's going on are few at the moment, other than we need to stay on top of it and do our best to contain it, while hoping it doesn't get worse.

Since it appears most people here didn't actually see the press conference... the highlights were:

There will be different levels of quarantine implemented depending on who you are and where you are coming from.

First, ALL flights coming back from Mainland China will be diverted to 7 US location -- LA (LAX), San Francisco (SFO), NY (JFK), Chicago (O'hare), and 3 other locations I don't recall at the moment.

Once you arrive in the US from anywhere from Mainland China, you will have to undergo mandatory screening at the port of entry.

For US citizens, Permanent Residents, and immediate relatives of US citizens and Permanent citizens:If you are traveling back to the US from the Wuhan province, you will be put into institutional quarantine, that is, you will not be allowed to return home, instead you will be shipped off to a gov't run facility for up to 14 days to be monitored by the CDC.

If you are traveling back to the US from anywhere in China other than the Wuhan province, you will also go through a screening, but than you will be told to self quarantine yourself for 14 days once you return home. You will be allowed to continue to your final destination assuming you pass the mandatory screening at the port of entry. A local health authority in your State/county will be working with the CDC and Homeland Security to monitor your self quarantine. It's unclear how this will be enforced.

For non-citizens and non-permanent residents, you will be barred from traveling to the US from anywhere from Mainland China. There was not date given when this restriction will end.

If you are traveling via ship from China, the ports of entry for the ships will also have the same restrictions as above.

This virus is moving fast, fascinating following it on the twitterverse from reliable sources.

Oh yes, twitter. A well-known repository of reliable sources. What a hoot. The internet is THE place to observe how fucking stupid humanity can be. What a world.

But seriously, there are plenty of epidemiologists, public health experts, and politicos discussing this stuff in real time.

Yep - and Twitter can be one of the best places to keep up with their latest thoughts on fast-moving stories.

If all you're seeing on Twitter is clickbait and garbage posts, the problem is the user. Twitter (and the internet in general) is still plenty capable of being a wonderful repository of information if you know how to use it.

By the way, the infrastructure that we had in place to respond to exactly this kind of outbreak was just nuked last year by John Bolton, because he didn't think global health issues as a national security priority.

This virus has a much lower mortality rate than much more common bugs (or SARS). I assume that the real issue is that it's a new one.

The next one may not be so gentle.

The real issue is containing it so that it does not become endemic in the population and become a seasonal illness that comes back year after year killing up to 2% of the infected and mutating out of control. That's the problem you have to solve with the novel Wuhan coronavirus.

If one of them is asymptomatically infected and passes the virus on to another one of them a week into the quarantine, could that then cause the virus to break out of containment if that second person doesn't become symptomatic before the quarantine is over? Or are they regularly testing all of them to ensure none of them are asymptomatically infected?

21st century, we don't have to wait for symptoms to develop. Regular blood tests while quarantined, and likely for some time after being released.

An one other thing I think might be falsely reassuring is the rate of increase in reported cases. It dawned on me that it was suspiciously linear over the last several days. It may be because they've reached the capacity to test samples in any given time period. I do know that over ten thousand were still pending testing (that number has varied, of course). So it might be that the disease is spreading faster than confirming the cases can keep up with.

Yes, China is fully limited by the number of test kits available. They're running several tests in series to rule out other respiratory bugs before using the limited number of nCov test kits on a suspected patient.

She says she was given three tests -- a nasal swipe to rule out the flu, a CT scan to compare her lungs against those of infected patients, and a blood test. After nine hours of tests and waiting for results she says the doctor told her that she had coronavirus, but because he could not give her the fourth and most definitive test, she could only be considered a suspected patient. Her 67-year-old father is in the same situation.

The Lancet's models are probably a better indicator of epidemic progression:

Quote:

In our baseline scenario, we estimated that the basic reproductive number for 2019-nCoV was 2·68 (95% CrI 2·47–2·86) and that 75 815 individuals (95% CrI 37 304–130 330) have been infected in Wuhan as of Jan 25, 2020.

Since this disease isn't 'the Flu' (influenza) I guess that's a false 'suspected' case. See how this happens?

Edit- and in the second paragraph it is clearly stated "There are no suspected cases in New York City." Again. Someone posts 'suspected case in Queens' turns out to be COMPLETELY FALSE.Yeah twitter-and arcite- are a wealth of information on this.

If one of them is asymptomatically infected and passes the virus on to another one of them a week into the quarantine, could that then cause the virus to break out of containment if that second person doesn't become symptomatic before the quarantine is over? Or are they regularly testing all of them to ensure none of them are asymptomatically infected?

That sucks they're quarantined like that, but I agree that the CDC is better off being remembered for taking strong action here, even if this just turns out to be another mild-illness-causing virus that ends up in common circulation (given the current growth rate internationally I'm not very hopeful of it being contained anymore). They would be castigated for underreacting if this ends up being a lot worse.

That would require the quarantined individuals to be in contact with each other. Keeping each quarantined individual isolated from the others would prevent the disease from progressively infecting multiple hosts.

I wonder about reported mortality rates for things like SARS, MERS, or Wuhan, where mild cases of the disease have very similar symptoms to any number of conventional maladies like the common cold or influenza, and where we're working with a relatively small sample size (SARS 8000 cases, MERS 2000 cases). Seems like they're almost certainly overstated because a large number of cases go undiagnosed, either because they never result in severe enough symptoms to generate a contact with the health care system, or because they aren't tested and are assumed to be a more common ailment. Has anyone tried to study this or make more accurate estimates?

If one of them is asymptomatically infected and passes the virus on to another one of them a week into the quarantine, could that then cause the virus to break out of containment if that second person doesn't become symptomatic before the quarantine is over? Or are they regularly testing all of them to ensure none of them are asymptomatically infected?

It looks like there are several labs that have developed rapid blood tests for this strain. I suspect that all these quarantined individuals will receive testing before release to confirm that they are clear, mitigating the risk of having asymptomatic carriers released.